269: George Saunders & Gary Shteyngart

26:02You know, it gives you different readings every day. So in what I do, it's in writing, it's you come back to it day after day after day after day. And the idea is that over time, your reaction stabilizes. And in the meantime, you've had literally hundreds of versions of yourself that have weighed in. So grouchy you has weighed in, fastidious you has weighed in, joyful you has weighed in. And so the idea is that by the end of it, the story is sort of like the sum total of the best parts of you. And it achieves a kind of wit or in my case, humor, or even sometimes wisdom that you personally don't have, you know, so that, so I would love to talk to chefs about that question.

26:46Like, how is it that, How is it that you're the most amazing meal you've ever served? How did that come about? You know, what's the combination of intuition and luck and consciousness and so on? Well, I think of making salad. The 1 ,000 salads you've made in your life, how many, like intuition takes over at some point. There's a grouchy you who's made a salad. There's the optimistic you who's made a salad. I don't know. I'm like stuck on salad. I don't know why I'm thinking about this. it's it's George is a cool point and I feel like I encourage you to pursue this this work I would love to read it well but you know it's even like we were watching a movie about rock climbing last night and one of the things was you're not thinking you know you're you're just reacting and so I think you know there's um so many in our in our world right now there's so much emphasis on linear rational often reductive thinking there's certainly a big emphasis on people having strong opinions quickly you know maybe maybe because of the internet or social media but in writing i i love the idea that you can have a series of opinions slowly uh you can get all of yourself in there to think it through uh and it makes it kind of a spacious sense that i really really like and when i've talked to some friends who are really good cooks or to chefs you always feel that there's an openness about it you know that process has made them more confident maybe not more confident in their spot judgment but maybe more confident in their cumulative judgment or something like that in a thing at work from your recent collection liberation day you reference custom mustards and i i think uh it's like a sign of snobbery in the character um i have to ask you deep down do you think it's okay to like have three types of mustard in your oh yeah yeah and she's not actually that woman is self-judging she's projecting that someone will think that about her.

28:41Yes, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, yeah, that's, and then, you know, the other thing in that story, there's the other side of it that one of the characters is, uh, complaining about her life. And she says, you know, all these people are going out for lunch and I just get a, you know, a slice of an apple and a piece of cheese, you know? So this, in that story, I think the idea of, um, you know, what foods do you have access to? Uh, and that was, for me, you know, when I was working, I worked a lot of, of jobs and, uh, several of them, And what I remember is that I couldn't afford a meal or I had to grab something from home.

29:16There was a there was a run where I was a doorman in Beverly Hills. And I actually got into the habit of taking potatoes, uncooked potatoes out of the fridge that didn't belong to me, you know, to eat them at lunch. You know, it was that was that kind of thing. And so then when you'd see somebody who lived in the apartment building come in with a beautiful salad or something, it was bitter, you know. Yeah, it was like a real sense of reality, like a moment of reality. You know, I have to say the Olive Garden leftovers moment in that story. Wow. That's like, that's dark. Like the co-worker just like dropping a plate of leftovers from Olive Garden on her co-worker's desk.

29:57And it's actually even worse because it's been wrapped up in one of those tinfoil swan shapes. You know, that's the thing. That's right. But that's a great little moment there where you're painting this picture of the swan-shaped. But I remember that. I worked at a similar place, and I remember we were young, had our kids, and we didn't have a lot of money. So there was a real kind of tension around lunch for me. It was literally close enough to the bone for us that to have$15 for lunch or$10 was not – you didn't. so it was um you know when you think about about life and about class and about working that's a moment when as noon grows close uh you know it people handle it in different ways and it's it can be very uh i remember when i was in a doorman there was a food truck that would come up beside behind the condo in beverly hills and they had the most amazing pastrami sandwich the best i've ever tasted but they were you know this was in the 80s and they were maybe seven dollars or something And it was a very precise amount,$7.29 after taxes.

31:00And so I really remember certain days where I had$7.20. Like, where the hell are nine pennies? Back before we had Square and Apple Pay, right? It's a different generation. Yeah, right, right. Well, you're giving me these memories of Los Angeles. And when you were living in Los Angeles, are you hitting taco trucks? Are you on the east side? Paint the picture of Los Angeles during your time there. that time uh we were well we were crashing with a friend in santa monica which got tense after a while i remember uh tomies the cheeseburger uh place was amazing and then also somebody taking us downtown to um yeah um el salvador and taco so they were being sold on the street that were just off the charts uh and then there was also you know it's you know how sometimes you get far enough away from something you're not sure if you maybe dreamed it but there was a place uh very 80s kind of place that was sort of like if Devo had a restaurant you know sign me up yeah and all the waiters sort of dress like that and I I remember they also were kind of encouraged to be a bit robotic and the food all had kind of Jetson like named you know I have no idea where that was or if that if that was but yeah wow I mean it's like Michael McCarthy or Wolfgang Puck or I mean who's doing this this space age robotic I mean it sounds almost like a version of los angeles that was painted in like tv and film back in the 80s right like la story like steve martin no and it just is sort of like um okay so it was almost like if you took classic american diner but then set it in the year 2300 that's kind of what they had in mind you know but but honestly for that time what i remember most is just that uh we're like getting into town the first day and somebody taking us somewhere for wayros and charles and it was so delicious and also so kind of perfect for the place and kind of exotic, you know.

32:55But the real thing I remember is the kind of the question of where the, you know, what's the next meal going to look like and how do we get it? And, you know, the feeling of paucity really, which is, you know, especially bitter in L.A. Yeah. Did you read Jonathan Gold at all when you were there? No, I did not. No, I didn't get to read Jonathan. Do you read cookbooks? I mean, I have to ask, we have a lot of cookbook authors on the show, And I want to know is, you know, between your academic work and your own writing, you probably don't have a lot of time, but do you read cookbooks? I really don't.

33:25I mean, I'm sorry to be a bummer. No, no, it's good. Yeah, I have – my life is – it requires an incredible amount of time at the desk. I wish it didn't. I wish I was a little more – and it's one of my kind of regrets right now is that I'm not living a particularly full life. I'm not like a big hiker. I don't, you know, so, but, but for whatever reason, the writing projects are so interesting and they take so much time that I've kind of just said, well, that that's, that's it. I mean, George, it sounds like you're living your truth and, and it doesn't sound like, it doesn't sound like you're regretting it.

34:00I mean, you might want to do hiking, but you love writing so much. So why? I feel like I should regret it and kind of get into the point of, yeah, I'm not going to do that. I mean, hiking is overrated. Let's just like, we'll like say it right now on the show. No, I'm kidding. I just think it's – thank you for sharing that and being honest about it because I feel like we try to project like we want to live this ideal life, especially moving from New York to California. Like you want to like be a hiker. You want to have definitely like three or four different kind of box delivery co-op deals happening.

34:31And of course, the farmer's market, but that's not how we live our lives, right? Yeah, although my wife and I have been riding our bikes to the Brentwood farmer's market, and that's kind of opening my eyes. We get some incredible mushrooms there. that and i'm the kind of guy who'd be like you know a mushroom is a mushroom and no these mushrooms are you can put them in anything and it makes it better but i yeah you know that it's interesting to um maybe a little bittersweet to get to a point where you're like okay this life has been about the short story you know and um okay so if you want to see that through to the end you have to really uh make some sacrifices you know you have to really uh sort of admit to yourself that it gives you deep pleasure to be in the middle of a story no matter how you know no matter how much it blocks out everything else and it's a strange i think in our time where i think the illusion is that one should have it all or that the you know the well-lived life is the goal um kind of exciting to me to think well maybe the well-lived life is a incredibly obsessive one you know with one focus and then through that life everything is there really but it does run a little bit counter to what you sometimes feel you should be doing.

35:45Love Letter. Love Letter is an epistolary. It's one of my favorite pieces in the new collection. And you really tackle how generations communicate with each other, how a grandfather communicates with a grandson as a world tilts toward authoritarianism. And I guess the format was interesting, like a handwritten letter. What are you playing with in this work? well i mean honestly i had uh an experience this was right before the last election so you know i was really uh engaged and upset and and um so i had one extended conversation with somebody from my larger family who's quite to the right of me and it got a little heated but you know it's family and then another conversation with a couple young people i know who uh were to the left of me which is kind of hard to do but they were also got a little heated and um so then at the end of that you're kind of not you're reminded that you don't really know where you are politically actually it's it's you know it's kind of transient but also was reminded of how deeply satisfying those kind of conversations are if they don't spin into rage you know and in both of the cases there was enough love there and respect that you know it could be sort of heated in a way that i remember fondly from Chicago.

37:01You know, you could, you can fight with somebody as long as you bring it back home at the end. So that was kind of on my mind. I thought, let me try to write these feelings I'm having. I'll put them in somebody else's head, but for starters, it's going to be my head. So I'm going to write to this imaginary grandson about my conflicted feelings about what's happening and whether or not I'm involved enough in pushing against these, this autocratic tilt. So that was really the first impulse just to try to write what I actually felt, which for me is kind of unusual usually i'm kind of inhabiting somebody but um so i just started doing that writing to a grandson that i felt very fond of um and kind of confessing basically just here's here's how i feel and the one slant i put on it was that this is now some years in the future um you know that the forces the anti-democratic forces have won big time well oh yeah he's like there's like very much concern the letter will be found by by an unknown government right right so sometimes with fiction you you're really just telling your story but you maybe put one weird thing in it you know that was kind of the kafka approach it's it's everything's normal except you know ducks can talk and then the idea is by by taking that concept very seriously you are eventually going to refract light back on the way things actually are now no so in this one the idea is okay now it's all it's a it's done it's done we are definitely not a democracy anymore and we're all living in the ruins and this guy is kind of saying well let me explain to you beloved grandson how we got here and what my part in it was well your love of russian literature is is very profound and clear in this in this piece and it seems your point is is is clear i i have to say the epistolary that comes to mind older author writing to a younger younger man is uh beverly clear he's Dear Mr.

38:51Henshaw. Are you familiar with this work? No, I'm not, but I will be. Yeah. Well, I got to say, shout out to Ms. Cargill in third grade. Put it in my hands. I just gave it to my nephew. It's an epistolary. I just had to bring it up. It got me thinking about this work. Well, it's a great form because presumably, you know, it's private. You know, if I write you a letter, that's between you and me. So that allows for a real honesty, person to person plus you get the kind of you know uh elevated diction that you can use in a letter that you might not use in person so it's kind of a nice way to sort of look behind the curtain and see what a person is really thinking and in this case um one of the things that interests me about the story that i didn't plan at all was that the grandfather actually starts to change his mind as he gets deeper into it just subtly you know and so that was a fun thing to try to convey that he he's coming off a little bit like cautiously urging his grandson not to get political keep your head down and by the end of it he's almost talked himself out of it sort of by the you know by you think maybe by rereading his own letter he's like wait a minute I don't know if I really believe that I like that that that moment it strikes me yeah the that that moment of realization um several people are typing comes to mind uh Calvin Kosolke I think it's say's name it's a it's an epistolary through the slack channel i don't know if you're familiar with this no i'm pretty much not familiar with any work it appears no no i i'm not trying to i'm not trying to stunt here i i just had to say this idea of the uh epistolary and written like letters or texts or slack channels um to your point i think it's so so powerful when uh we uh we don't think anyone's reading you know we're saying what we want to say right right george i have to know So cooking, are you doing it at home?

40:45Are you ordering in? What's the situation like? Well, my wife and I have tried, and I'm not too good at it. We tried to split the cooking lately, so that meant that I had to learn. So I do a pretty good, like a beet soup, and I just got a minestrone down. And so I'm trying to, you know, carry my weight. She's a really wonderful cook, so it seems sometimes like, you know, why should I bother except to be helpful you know so I'm learning I'm learning a few things but um yeah and I think we're uh we we just bought a little apartment in LA so the temptation to order out is is really strong since we're both writing um but we're you know we just are real improvisers we just improvise and whatever shows up we you know for a while during the pandemic we were the idea was to make a soup and then basically just eat it until you couldn't anymore you know So you couldn't bear it anymore.

41:41Yeah, it's definitely in my household, we make like chicken bas stew and it'll be like day four. And we're like, should we or shouldn't we? It's almost like a challenge, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, honestly, when both of us are working, it's really just sustenance. Like let's, you know, how can we, sometimes we joke because it feels like the idea is let's turn this day around and get the next one started as soon as possible. You know, could we put both in working for 10 hours and we're fascinated by what we're doing. in uh so dinner is kind of like let's just you know take the path of least resistance it's just pure nourishment yeah i i write my yeah i absolutely know what that means and do you think do you think actually writing burns calories like oh i think 100 you know after a good day i'm just uh exhausted and um all mental all mental activity yeah for sure yeah but i mean a burn i mean you you need sustenance like you need it's like you're running a marathon every single day yeah especially I think you know with fiction there's there's um there's the writing part but then there's also I don't know what you would call it but to me the key skill is to um separate yourself from what you've just written so you can see it the way a first-time reader might and that's a real I mean that's not something you can will yourself to do exactly it does take a certain kind of energy and then for me it also sometimes means I have to disrupt that sitting at the desk and go do something else, even something very minor.

43:08Then you come back to it and just marginally more able to see what you've done apart from your sort of pre-existing attachment to it. Does leaving the desk sometimes include coffee? Oh, yeah, for sure. Or even if I run out, then I have to go to Cat and Cloud and get some more, and then that's even better. Yeah, you need to go to Cat and Cloud. Oh, yeah, those guys. We got to shut them out again, Cat and Cloud. George Saunders, we asked all guests in the Taste podcast, if there was a dream food book or cookbook project that you could work on without the burden of time, meaning you do not have a deadline, or the burden of budget, meaning you have unlimited funds to make this book happen, I'd love to know, what book would you write?

43:46Well, it's probably been written, but what fascinates me is, okay, as somebody who's written some historical fiction, I'm really interested in the way that a house, for example, would have smelled in 1862 that we can't imagine. You know, the things that are present in the house that we don't have anymore or the methods of cleaning that haven't been discovered yet. And included in that, I would love to look at a really typical household in, say, 1862 and live through a week in the culinary life of that house. You know, in the same way that we were just talking about, what's dinner? how long does it take who did it and especially like how does how does it taste different from the food that we eat now because you know when you're when you're writing about the past like that you you really are trying to imagine on that level the micro level you know what are the shoes feel like uh you know what what's the uh kind of traffic pattern in the house and so on so i think the you know the idea that whatever our house smelled like just before dinner time was probably not what we would expect it's probably totally different and conversely if they could come you know and and come into a house in which someone had just microwaved a breakfast burrito would probably freak them out you know i i was just thinking microwave popcorn like if like somebody came from like 1862 and got came to a house and it was like a microwave popcorn in a microwave that would be crazy it would be like you know i remember when we were kids in chicago my my uh grandparents lived over uh on the south side 55th in california and there was a closet when you first came in and as kids we were so fascinated by it because all the men at that time were wearing overcoats and so the ritual hanging up of the overcoat and the placing of the hat on the shelf and the people would um put these things mothballs you know into the closets to discourage moss and it had such a crazy smell almost like a food smell which is dangerous and um but that whole thing now is vanished you know so if you were writing a book about 1962 that was a very real thing you know that not only doesn't exist anymore but how would you know you know and and especially how would you know the smell of it so that would be that would be interesting you know it's very george it's interesting because it's like so many of these products were probably extremely toxic and killing these people oh yeah at the time you know like cleaning supplies from 1950 well i know there were stories that kids would eat these mothels because they look great.

46:20They look like jawbreakers. Oh my gosh. George Saunders, thank you for joining the Taste Podcast. Thank you so much. I had a great time.

46:38You're a depth observer of online culture, celebrity shenanigans, social media, and food, the consumed, cooked, and projective-yous social media channels type of food. I really wanted to know what gets you excited about food culture today? I like the fact that anyone can sort of just open a little tiny place and it can become a gigantic hit. If I lived in Portland, Oregon, I was just in Portland for my book tour and I was just eating from truck to truck. I mean, that's a very developed truck culture. But I think my favorite place in New York last year was the Liberiolandia taco truck, which is from Tijuana originally, the kind of food originates.

47:25And it's a beautiful, sloppy, wet taco that you dip into consomme. So, you know, you buy a taco, you buy a consomme. And even though your tacos are like falling apart because it's just brisket, it's just bathed in soup and you're just dipping it into more soup. And I mean, it's indecent. Did you find that on TikTok? Because honestly, the Bria trend was real on TikTok. It was a real thing. I am not a ticker-tocker. I am on the gram. So it takes me usually 10 years to find a trend. I just got rid of my MySpace. Oh, congratulations. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's just there's nothing on it. But you can still find me at Hotmail.

48:06and, you know. Yeah, I was seeing it pop up on Instagram. And then I have a friend who's sort of like my bloodhound, and he's always, and he spends the whole day just basically walking around the city eating. And he said, you got to go to Flushing. And I went, oh, it's so far. And then finally they opened a truck in Williamsburg, so I went across the river. I'm scared of subways because I'm claustrophobic. So when I have to get to the boroughs from Manhattan, I take a ferry. And the ferry often drops me off right where the good food is, like Sunset Park and Astoria or LIC, Long Island City or anything like that.

48:49So I've been hopping around, eating from place to place. Did you ferry here? We're in midtown Manhattan at the Penguin Random House. I walked here. So I live downtown. So I walked in midtown. I try to also walk like six miles a day because I eat so much that if I don't walk for like two and a half hours, it's just it's not going to be good, you know. So we met, I say met quote because we just met today face to face, but we emailed maybe like six years ago when you blurbed very kindly my cookbook, Koreatown. Yeah, that was the tastiest book I've ever blurbed. It was amazing. Thank you for that.

49:20And our country friends has a real distinct Korean thread there. There's two main characters who are Korean, and you write very vividly about Korean culture and Korean food. And I just wanted to know from the jump, how do you bring this distinct Korean flavor to your writing, which you've had in many of your novels? I am surrounded by Korean-Americans. That friend I just mentioned, the bloodhound, who goes around, he's Korean-American. My wife's Korean-American. My kid, I guess, is half Korean. My mentor, Chang-Rae Lee, the author of many great books, was Korean-American. two of my best friends.

49:58It just goes on and on. So I went to a high school that was very – there were a lot of kids from immigrant backgrounds like my own. I was born in Russia in the Soviet Union, and there were a lot of kids from Korea, India, China, et cetera. And so, you know, people were just sitting around eating kimbap, you know, which is a kind of lunch dish with rice and seaweed. It's like a roll, but it's very substantial, and you can stuff it with anything. I've had like foie gras kimbap somewhere. Oh, over Mofuku? Yeah, Mofuku. That would be it. And when I go to Seoul, I have lunch. It's such a cheap but incredibly filling lunch.

50:37So all that culture has always been marinating, kind of like the beef. And one of my favorite restaurants, which was in Koreatown, just closed recently, Marangusai, which, do you know that place? They did micro brisket. They did a kind of thick ribeye. It was really very delicious. Sunwon Garden? No. Marangosai. I think Changrei or somebody, some Korean American took me there. And it was, they did a really great job. I was very sad that the pandemic killed them. Oh, that's sorry. I didn't know that one. And what else do you like in 35 and 32 here in the city? You know, I think I like some of the stuff a little closer to me in downtown.

51:16Like Atomix is great. I love Coat, the steakhouse. Sure. That's a really beautiful piece of beef. yeah the last time I went to Seoul this billionaire friend of mine took me out to like this pretty unassuming steakhouse but it was like you know everyone all the heads of the chaebol the you know the chaebols they were all eating this really delicious steak that's been marinated in cognac for years and you know just exceptional that sounds rad man cognac marinated bulgogi yeah conabi bulgogi yo man Yeah, yeah. I love Seoul. I was just there last year in November. What a city. I feel like no one is writing about it vividly.

52:00I feel like. What do you think? Will you set a novel there? I would love to. You know, I've written. So I did a piece a long time ago for Travel and Leisure when I kind of ate my way around Seoul. And then I did a really weird piece for the Smithsonian Magazine where I researched robots in Korea. So I went from like one robot manufacturer to another. but also ate my way through it too. I went to the opposite coast. Incheon is on one coast. I can't remember what the town was on the other side. Pohong? Maybe. That sounds kind of familiar. And crab was one of their specialties. They had a lot of crab stuff like crab bibimbap which was incredible.

52:38Oh, that sounds good. I feel like Seoul will have its Tokyo moment sometime. Yeah, I hope so. Yeah, yeah. You know, because it's kind of a huge city. Obviously, so is Tokyo. But it's, you know, the subway connects it really, the metro connects it really nicely. You can be anywhere in 20 minutes, you know, because it's such a fast, wonderful subway. So you can really eat your way through that town, too. And great food stands, too. So your character, Ed, who is Korean-American or Korean, I'm not sure if it's— Korean-Korean. Korean-Korean, right, right, right. But he has British, UK—I'm sorry, UK, Swiss, and Canadian citizenship.

53:12That's right. He's a real citizen of the world. A real slasher, yeah. But Ed has this amazing line. the world needs another Mediterranean cookbook like I need another ulcer. It's so fun. I wonder, do you believe personally in that sentiment? And then the second part is, what is the cookbook that we do need? So here's the thing, and I'll be completely blunt. I eat like a maniac. If you follow me on Instagram, or Twitter, anything, all I'm doing is eating. And then I walk six miles or I swim for two hours to try to keep some of that weight off. But that's all I do. But I do not know how to freaking cook at all.

53:51I don't know how to boil water. Last time I did, you know, the water exploded somehow. I caused like a Chernobyl-type thing in my kitchen and everything was, you know. And it's funny. Upstate, where I spent half the year, we have a chef used to own the house. So there's this incredible, I don't know how many range burner range with 12 burners. Twelve? Okay. I can't even count them. I don't know. There's a lot of burners. I don't know what the hell's going on. There's all these buttons. It's like an airplane cockpit to the baking oven. You can put an entire pig in there. But it's completely lost on me.

54:21And my wife thankfully cooks a little bit. But, you know, we're all very busy. So there's a lot. In New York, I just eat out all the time. But upstate, we do sometimes cook for Christmas or something for friends. And so we'll throw in a pig or a moose. Do you feel, though, that you have a sense of the cookbook world? Like, I mean, I know you're not a home cook, but you write books. I do. I mean, you know, I enjoyed your book quite a bit. I enjoyed another book, and I recently ate there in Portland, Kachka, which is an amazing, you know, Russian food. Look, I'll be honest, it's not my favorite food, even though I grew up there.

54:54It's not very spicy. It's kind of, everything's boiled and kind of a lot of sour cream and butter. It's not my favorite, but they do an incredible job, kind of hipster Russian cuisine, really great. And they wrote a very funny kind of book. also, you know, going at one of their, you know, just like in your book, somebody has some of the heritages from there and they get to contribute. So I do love to read those books. Like I can read them, you know, and they're fun, but there's got to be a narrative to it too. So it's not just, you know, oh, now we're going to cook this, we're going to cook that.

55:26But my wife is a really good cook, so I often buy her cookbooks. For me, the more interesting stuff is sort of, if I were to attempt cooking, it would be, I guess I would go to like the Mark Bittman land. I think he also lives upstate. And he's yeah, he's down in Cold Spring. Cold Spring. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He's a little bit north south of me. I'm more in the Rhinebeckian. Yeah. You're in the Rhinebeck land. I live upstate as well in Orange County. Yeah. So we can we can debate who has the better food. It's funny. There used to be like a lot of East Coast, West Coast. It was like East side of the river, West side of the river.

56:01But even now, I admit that Kingston right now has the best food scene. And that's a town of about 26 ,000 people and a lot of Brooklynites have fled there to the point where when I was getting my license renewed during the pandemic, this woman came out and was like – in the DMV and was like, no Brooklyn people. It's funny how Kingston does have incredible bakery and pizza up there is very good. The pizza is good. Lola's Pizzeria is great if you try that. And also the Kinsley, the Hotel Kinsley has a beautiful restaurant. Oh, I don't know. It's an old bank, and food is really spectacular. Well, this is an endorsement for Kingston and paid for by the Kingston Tourism Board.

56:39Yeah, the Kingston Bureau of Eatings. Speaking of, you're not a home cook, but you can write food scenes beautifully. And I want to call out the Tonato and Snappi scene. I really, anybody, I hope our listeners have read your book, Our Country Friends. It's worth it just for the recipe. The recipe. So is this scene based on any kind of recipe? because it's written in a way that clearly you cooked it once when you were writing. I didn't cook it, but a good friend of mine cooked it. So I often, so, you know, our country friends, the conceit is that everyone, this Russian writer, where'd I come up with that, right?

57:13He has all his friends who are all fleeing the pandemic during the start in March 2020. They all come up to his house and everyone takes turns cooking dinner and stuff like that. So, and I do something similar. I have, during the summer, I invite a lot of my friends from the city to come up. I have a lot of friends who live there full time. but everyone kind of takes turns grilling or cooking. And so my friend, James Baluet, who is a rock musician with a band, used to be in a band called Versus. Now I think it's the Plus Minus Band. Really great band. Versus Rules, man. Yeah, Versus Rules. What a great band.

57:47It's a great band. Oh, damn. Nice reference. Nice reference, right. Yeah, so I've known him way back in the day when I think Versus, it was still called Versus. And so I invited him up a couple of years ago, and he made this incredible Vitello Tonato, which I love. But he used, you know, snap peas, which I didn't know. And I think he got the – I think he said he got the recipe from somewhere else. But it was so exceptional. And when the book came out as a promotional thing, I had a wonderful writer from New York Times, the book review, Alexandra Alter. She came up with her husband and I invited my friend James up and he made that exact thing.

58:23And a lot of people also made the exact recipes for this article for the New York Times. Yeah, it's really beautiful. And I feel you, even if you're eating this in winter when snap peas aren't in season, I'm like going to go find some snap peas. Yeah, yeah. And we actually, so we, you know, there's wonderful food stands all over up here, you know, so we would buy the snap peas and then we would get, oh, and also grilled sardines. He makes these really beautiful. I don't know how he just grills them perfectly. That's a delicious, you know, an underrated fish. And actually one thing I eat that I know how to make because I just opened a can is there's all kinds of Portuguese really high-end sardine makers.

58:58and they make them in spices and vegetable and hot vegetable oil. Oof, really delicious. So that, you know, I open up that. I toast up a piece of bread. I know how to do that. I put out some beautiful, you know. It's more curating, right, than cooking. It's more curating, yeah. I know how to curate. I have to shout out my colleague Anna Hiesel, senior editor at Taste. She is writing a book about conservas and tinned fish. So I love conservas and tinned fish. And there's a great place, you know, in New York called Huertas. Yes, yes, of course. On First and Six are around. They're beautiful, really sweet owners and chef and everything.

59:31And it's partly, I mean, it's around, they do other kinds of dishes too, but you can have a whole meal of beautiful cockles and mussels and sardines and whatever. It's just beautiful. Speaking of collecting, you write very vividly about your bar, the bar at the house in the novel. And I like that you have your protagonist mixing Negronis with 60-year Campari, 60-year-old, is that intentionally like, hey, this guy doesn't know what he's doing? Or do you actually have a moment? Do you believe that this is the best way to make a Negroni? Look, I have people who, when they come by, everyone brings a bottle of something.

1:00:08And a lot of my friends bring really special stuff. Sure. You know, from all over the world. We have some French, a French friend who lives nearby. And her parents are in wine country, but they make their own gin and they bottle it. And it's unlike any other gin I've ever, and I love making martinis, and I just couldn't bring myself to make anything with them. I just drink this gin straight up, nothing else. It is the elixir of the gods. It's so beautiful. But, yeah, people bring all this stuff, and I'm like, oh, my God, should I – what do I do with antique Campari? Probably I should just drink it by, you know, make something.

1:00:43I love that you have antique Campari on hand. That's just the best thing. Well, it's all gone by now, but, yes, it existed at one point. Now I'm like slowly going through this gin. But I know that people will always surprise me, and people come from all over. You know, people do their travels. Well, this has stopped during the pandemic, but before, people would be like, oh, I just – somebody just brought me – I was on tour when I was reading in San Francisco. And I love anything Georgian. There's a great Georgian restaurant in my part of Manhattan. What's it called? It's called Chito Gavrito. I can't remember where it is exactly, but somewhere near Union Square.

1:01:16And it's, oh, these aubergine rolls and this garlicky chicken they do, a whole hen. It's incredible. So this guy who's just, you know, he reads my books and he brought me homemade cha-cha, which is a kind of Georgian brandy, C-H-A-C-H-A. And it was so freaking good. And I realized I was, you know, I had to wake up the next morning and I forgot that I had it. And then the dude in the airport is like, it's like seven in the morning. I had an early flight to Portland. He's like, you can't, you know, you got to check in your luggage. And I was like, there's no time. So I just drank the whole freaking bottle.

1:01:55The whole freaking bottle. And I think I had like a NPR interview or something later that day. I'm like, let me tell you about my book. I'll definitely link to that interview in the show notes. You can find it. Yeah. Oh, my God. I love it. It's great. I feel like this book has a lot of time traveling happening. And one of the wonderful parts of the aspects of the book, Our Country Friends, is the flashbacks of New York in the 90s, New York City. And I get to shout out to Screaming Mimi's. That's a great reference. Thank you. But one of the best references is Florent. You write about Florent as a meatpacking institution from the 80s until I would say 2014, maybe 2010.

1:02:35I might be wrong. Let's talk about Florent because clearly you have a connection to the place. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. It was such an eye-opener for me. You know, I grew up in eastern Queens, Little Neck Queens, you know, which is – it might as well be the suburbs. Kind of very far away. There's not even a subway there. You have to take the Long Island Railroad to get into town. And it was a very provincial – I went to this kind of parochial Jewish school, right? I didn't even know what Manhattan was. Like for a while, I confused some of the tall buildings in Queens for Manhattan. I just didn't know where, you know.

1:03:08And then I got into this high school in Manhattan, this kind of math and science high school where I met all of my friends, some of whom are, you know, composites for some of the characters in our country, friends. So, and that was Manhattan. That was East Village, Lower East Side kind of place. And it was incredible. And along the way, I think maybe right after school ended, I discovered Florent. And it was a trip. First of all, the food was really good. Always. Always good. It was never bad. I mean, that's the one thing about this restaurant. It was always good. Never bad. You could buy a carafe of white wine for, I think, six bucks, right?

1:03:42Which I know was more than, right? But still, you know, whatever. Can you imagine a$10 carafe today? And mussels with fries, this incredible, what was it? Oh, it was like a goat cheese, spinach. Again, remember, I was from nowhere, from Hickland. And for me, this kind of, you know, cheap French food, please. But it was also the fact that it stayed open almost entirely through the night. And it was filled with denizens that I had never, ever imagined in my life. You know, every artist went down there. Every writer went down there. There were prostitutes, transgender prostitutes who used to ply their trade along Little West 12th.

1:04:21Yeah, Village Idiot right on that stretch. Exactly, exactly. Exactly. And so they would drop in at three in the morning after finishing their, I guess, shift or before a new shift began. And, you know, and it was the most democratic place in New York. And that's the kind of stuff I really miss now that Manhattan. And that's one of the reasons I really enjoy living upstate, not that we have that exactly, but it feels a lot certainly more democratic than the New York of today. I mean, you really have to go to, you know, to find a taco truck in Queens or Brooklyn if you want, or the Bronx if you want to find something like that today.

1:04:51But the Florent was just – and it was a beautiful kind of – it had a chrome bar. There was a kind of a letter board. It had a zinc bar. Zinc bar, exactly. Sorry, zinc bar. It had a kind of letter board where there would be funny writings. The owner was this wonderfully flamboyant dude. He was a French guy. His name was Florent. It was probably the most perfect restaurant in the world. And when it closed – I remember I went there the night before it closed. Oh, you did? I did. I did. I was doing a reading in Israel of all places, and I was like, put me on the flight. I got to get back in time for it.

1:05:24And it was so depressing, honestly. And I think for me, Manhattan really lost a lot of its luster. It was the meatpacking district before Restoration Hardware, before a lot of that bullshit that made that neighborhood soulless. It's soulless. I'm sorry to offend people who live there. I will. Okay, go ahead. I mean, it's one of my most disliked neighborhoods. Yeah, me too. I go there for the Apple store and it's like, that's right. That's where you go for it. It's like high-end electronic crap, not anything. I haven't eaten there in ages. Oh, you know, Pastis reopened. That's okay. But, you know, I wish they would move somewhere else.

1:06:02Yeah. Do you remember when Tom Brown used to hang out at Pastis like every single morning? Yeah. He would be at the – like Pastis had a real vibe too, similar to Florent like years later. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but he sort of picked up the baton from Florent in a way, but it was never like it. Never like it. But I just think, are there any other restaurants from 90s New York that you want to remember? I think our audience would appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. So there were a bunch actually not far from the meatpack industry. And I used to live around that area. I used to live on 11th and, oh God, I can't remember where, like Greenwich probably.

1:06:34Yeah, Greenwich and 11th, around there. So there was a great place on Jane around there called El Faro. And I think I've written about that in other books I've written because it was a real kind of a Spanish place. Everybody used to smoke inside. The walls were these kind of murals of scenes from Galicia. It was the Galician cuisine. So marascada in green sauce, like flack and garlic or shrimp al ajillo. And everything was, I mean, the salad had garlic. The tablecloth had garlic on it. You know, you walked out of there and you would smell like garlic for the rest of your life. and smoke because people would smoke.

1:07:12What a wonderful bouquet there. The garlic breath and then the cigarette. I mean, you know, and I remember like people go on dates. I would make out with people after smoking and eating there. I don't know how the hell because it didn't matter at that point. Everyone smelled like a garlic ashtray. Just delicious, delicious food. Another place, what the hell was it called? Rio Mar, which was also, which was right down the street from Florence in one of those sort of triangular buildings, beautiful buildings. Also Spanish food, specializing obviously in seafood. I saw I think the biggest roach I've ever seen in New York on the wall there.

1:07:52It looked like one of the lobsters had escaped. For a second I was like, ah, get him back in the tank. Then he flew away and I was like, oh. Oh, my God. I'll even shout out the old fatty crab that was over there. Remember fatty crab? I remember fatty crab. I think one of the owners of Fatty Crab, I don't know how this works. I think they have a place in Hudson, which is another great food town upstate, called Back Bar. Zach Palaccio. Oh, that's it. Zach Palaccio hopefully one day will be on the podcast. Right. Old acquaintance of mine. Good guy. Really good guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's behind that, right?

1:08:23Yeah. So that's a great place. And they do a kind of – they do all the cuisines of Southeast Asia, which can be a disaster, obviously. Yeah. But everything has a very specific taste and everything is as spicy as it should be. So highly recommend. When handled in the right hands, like Southeast Asian cuisine, my goodness. Yeah. It's the best. Yeah. Let's talk about your travels because you referenced some travel writing you've done and a lot of travel for your book tours and your work. Where do you like to travel for the food? I know this question seems boring, but I feel like I want to just where does your mind go when I ask you this kind of basic question?

1:08:56I used to be a contributing – when I was younger, I used to be contributing to travel and leisure. Oh, with like good expense accounts era? With the greatest expense accounts because this was when Amex owned it. Yes. Something called Meredith I think owns it now. Oh, so they gave you like a black or something? It didn't give me a card, but there was – you know, I remember like – I remember at one point flying business on Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong, staying at the peninsula, not just in any room but in the telescope suite where there's this giant telescope that looks out into the skyline from Kowloon where – and then having a Rolls-Royce Phantom drive me to the airport.

1:09:28It was bananas. I was like 30 years old. I'm like, this is life? Wow. It's all been downhill from there, obviously. But yeah, so yeah, food was a huge concentration for me. So I think some of the cities I enjoyed most, Bangkok for sure. I mean, another one of those cities where you walk around, people are selling you hot soup in plastic bags and you drink through a straw. I mean, you just kind of – another great city for ferries. You can take a ferry and hop around from pier to pier and there's great food. just walking a couple of blocks inland. Bombay is incredible. And I went there with a friend of mine, Suketu Mehta, who's a great eater and wrote Bombay Maximum City, a great Pulitzer finalist of a book about Bombay.

1:10:10So he knew where all the, you know, so we were both eating really well and being chased by gangsters and stuff. It was like a full - Sounds like its own novel, your trip. It was. It was a full-tilt kind of adventure. Beijing has great food. Yeah, I think Asia, Seoul, obviously, as I mentioned, a piece on Seoul. Asia, to me, has some of the best food out there right now. In terms of America, I think Memphis is an incredible underrated food for barbecue. Yeah. I love a good barbecue. Yeah, Beale Street's got some spots. And then you get, I think, there's a lot of good dry rub barbecue up there. Yeah.

1:10:43Really good. And a lot of it is, like, not in downtown, far from downtown. Yeah, you're right. You have to Uber around. And it's always, I think there's one called A &R or something. It's in the middle of nowhere. I've never had anything so delicious. It's like two bucks or something. It's ridiculous. Nice, Gary. Great pick from Memphis. That was unexpected. I love that pick. Yeah, Memphis is really great. I mean, the South in general is pretty damn good. I would definitely put Memphis on the map, yo. Do you want to break from fiction and get into some travel log? Yeah. Is that? I would love to.

1:11:14Are you kidding me? I would love to have my own travel show or something. I remember at one point we pitched it to some travel channel, but they were like, I had a bad pitch. I think it was going to be called The Annoyed Traveler or something. It was like me moping around because I didn't get bumped up to business or something. They're like, yeah, maybe not. But just a food trip, that would be incredible because I eat like a mother. I feel like you could take Tucci on. I feel like you could take him on. We aren't starting controversies here. Don't worry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would love for you to host a show or some kind of meet.

1:11:47I just enjoy your travel writing. You've written for Sephora. I enjoy it. I enjoy writing it more than anything, honestly. So I want to ask you about the bungalow colony you grew up going to in Ellenville. It was in Ellenville. Do you know Ellenville? Have you been there? So I was going to ask you about Cohen's Bakery. Oh, yeah. Did you ever go there and have the corner eye at Cohen's? No, we didn't. And the reason was, well, first of all, we didn't really know much about Ellenville. When we went to Ellenville, we went to one place only. There was a kind of, it was like a Dairy Queen set up, but it wasn't Dairy Queen.

1:12:18It was like an off-brand Dairy Queen. Dairy King, probably. Dairy King. Dairy princess. So we went there and then we went to the supermarket. We were also all really like recent immigrants. Nobody spoke English well. And we had, you know, we couldn't afford anything. I remember like when we went out to Ponderosa Steakhouse. Like that was a big thing. Or Sizzlers, you know. And I remember we'd go there and we would all stock up. You know, our grandparents would be putting tomatoes into their purses to try to steal them. because we were like, whoa,$6.99. We've got to make this laugh. Buffet culture is real, man.

1:12:55It's real. So we didn't, I don't think we, but there was a woman who drove around in this station wagon, this gigantic like AMC or something station wagon, and she would sell, she was this big woman, and she would scream, breads, cakes, all across the bungalow colony, and all these Russians would come out for a quarter. You could buy a Danish for 50 cents. You could buy like a - What a cool memory. Yeah, and so I wrote about this in a memoir called Little Failure. And all of a sudden, this guy wrote in and said, I think that was my mom. And he said we had a difficult relationship, I think. And she had issues and stuff.

1:13:31And that was very interesting because to us, she was like the bringer of bread. She was the baker. Well, I have to say in Ellenville today, there's a bakery called Cohen's Bakery. Ellenville is on the Whitaker Honkson over the hill up in the Catskills. And I feel like it is the best Jewish bakery in New York State. Wow. And the corn rye that they're making is insane. It is so good. It is the most deeply flavorful bread. And it has a texture. I think good rye has that velvety texture, right? Yeah, I love good rye. Good rye. It's corn rye. So I was just wondering if you've been up there. I highly recommend it.

1:14:07I'm going to go for sure. I'm going to go for sure. I actually – and there's a restaurant there that people have been talking about. I hope it didn't close. Aroma or something? Aroma or something. I don't know if you've ever – you haven't ever tried it. I would love to try both. Go to the bakery and the restaurant. I've not been to Rome. I've heard about it. But I know there's some cool things. Ellenville, a very small little town. And it has a great little theater there, though. Yeah, the theater. So what? Is the theater now movies or is it? It's a stage. It's a summer stuff. It's a stage. Yeah.

1:14:31Oh, because I think it was at one point a movie theater because I remember seeing Octopussy there and being so wowed by that. I think it was my first boss. Oh, there is a movie theater. Of course, there's a movie theater there. And it's an old two screener. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's wonderful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really great stuff. Oh, my God. I had such great memories. I'm glad we're talking about a TV and film because you write for Succession. And you also just praised Yellow Jackets, which – Yeah. Shout out Yellow Jackets. I should preface by saying I've done some stuff for Succession. I'm not like – Okay.

1:15:03One of the main writers, but I did work on the second season. My error – not yours because that was clear when I prepped. It was you're a consultant on Succession. Yeah. So I guess what draws you to this TV work? And in terms of the TV work, do you write food scenes? Because you have such this grasp of food writing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do. I haven't – I've never written a food scene. I hope to write a food scene. I find TV really – I'm a very dialogue-driven writer. So a lot of my books, you know, just people talking. People talking over food and, you know, prestige TV is all about people talking over food, sometimes in a private jet.

1:15:37But that's the – you know, that's succession really. They're all just talking and drinking and making snide remarks over really overpriced food. And so, yeah, I would love to write a food scene. And shows like Billions have great food scenes. You know, they often call out great New York eating spots. I think the people that write for that are big foodies. Yeah. The creator is clearly a foodie. The creator is a huge foodie. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, Koppelman, right? Yeah, yeah, Brian Koppelman. He's definitely, like, hanging out with a lot of food writers. And I like, obviously, TV that has, like, a real understanding of food and not just a surf superficial.

1:16:15It resonates with like 98 % of the population. Yeah. And, you know, on that note, I love hanging out with food critics. You know, I just recently had drinks with Adam Platt at Pestiz, actually. Oh, cool. You know, and he's really great. He's got a nice kind of no BS kind of attitude toward restaurants in New York. I remember Pete Wells, whose critiques I love. I remember having dinner with him, too. So there's some really, really delicious writers out there. I love it. You can learn a lot from a food critic. And on this show, just going to shout out, we've had interviews with Bill Addison. at the LA Times, Ruth Rochel, former New York Times, LA Times.

1:16:47Sure. Pete Wells previously. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Pete. Yeah, that's the way I said it. Yeah, yeah, Pete. Yeah, we've had them all on the Taste Podcast and Robert Saitzima. Oh, I love his stuff. He's great. And you can learn a lot from the critics. I love his stuff. We ask all of our guests on the Taste Podcast if there was a book that you could write, a cookbook, let's just say cookbook, Gary, without a budget or time or even a deadline, what would that cookbook be? Wow, that's a really tough one. I feel like if it existed, maybe it already exists. Does Russian Daughters have a cookbook? Ooh.

1:17:19Ooh. Don't quote me on it. I'm going to say they've got such great branding. They must have a cookbook. They must have one. See, this is the thing. So if they have one, then that kind of destroys any need for a cookbook for me because that kind of cookbook. Because they're incredible in that they have an amazing drinks list, one of the best drinks lists. I mean, their mixology is second to none. It's a cool place. You know, I love – because the Russian idea of food is you're basically – it's all about zakuski. which is sort of the appetizer. I mean, the main dishes kind of suck, if you ask me.

1:17:47Sorry, all the Russians out there. But it's the, you know, you're sitting around, little bits of herring on pumpernickel toast or sturgeon or sable or any one of these wonderful fishes. You put an ablini, you put it on some kind of rye or some kind of peasant bread, some pickles, and then you mix it with incredible drinks, right? And that's all you need, you know? So if there was, if that's, you know, that's what I like to serve people. That's my contribution when my friends make dinners, you know, and they cook these very complex, you know, my friend Suketu makes beautiful Gujarati vegan dishes, vegetarian dishes.

1:18:21And my, you know, my friend James makes that incredible vitello. And I will make, I will open up some beautiful Rosendorah sardines, slap them on pumpernickel bread and get some incredible vodka into the mix. I think a little bit of vodka goes a long way. It really does. And Gary Scheingart, thank you for joining us on the podcast. Thank you. Appreciate it.

1:18:44This is Taste is hosted by Eliza Abarbanel and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumbert. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things that are happening.